First Act
by Elyan White
Summary: The Exorcists do their duty in a town overrun with Akuma. Lavi, Allen, and Kanda-a standard day's work.
_"Innocence, activate!"_

Battle madness buzzing through his veins, Lavi let out a bloodthirsty snarl and leapt into the fray as the bulky, unnatural Akuma bodies bulged out of their human skins. Dark shapes were rising over the rooftops of the next street over, too, and the absence of general panic made him suspect that the local Broker had sold more souls than the town could keep up with. With a shout Lavi summoned an enormous stamp of red light in the street below, and heat blasted into his face as blazing serpents came twisting out of it to wreak havoc on the demonic vanguard. The metallic whine of machinery became a constant roar of destruction in his ears that was nearly enough to drown out the insistent Bookman whisper in his head- _how many, what levels, from where?_ -but he never lost count of the defeated, not once.

The Exorcist swung his war hammer up over his head in a deft arc of gleaming black as he sailed from the crumbling balcony behind him, twisting his body in mid-air to send Tessei's iron weight crashing straight through the metal shells of the Akuma and into the half-mechanized flesh of the inside. The resulting explosion blew Lavi's fiery red hair back from his face and snatched at the edges of his scarf, but he'd anticipated it. He leaned his weight into Tessei like a pole vaulter and rode the violent updraft, the hammer shaft elongating in his fingers with an odd liquid sensation until the hammer head slammed down somewhere out of sight into the smoke-covered road. Another explosion thrummed up into his arm as the smashed remnants of an unlucky Akuma burst into shrapnel, caught by the barbed point on the top of his hammer, but Lavi melded the momentum of his body with the Innocence and the stinging wind so that his balance didn't waver.

He jerked to the side when a jagged piece of bloody, _poisonous_ armor whistled by his cheek, reflexively saving himself from the blood virus, and hastily shrank his hammer back into a defensive two-handed grip as he skidded hard onto the opposite rooftop. The shingles slid and clattered under his boots, but they didn't give, so Lavi spun around, extending his hammer out in a flash to sweep a crafty-looking Level 2 out of the air, plus the obligatory row of Level 1s with their bristling guns and their identical masks of suffering.

They crumpled like so much foil against the melting heat and brute force of his Innocence, igniting one after the other like fireworks and belching back acrid-smelling fumes of semi-toxic soot at him. Lavi dipped his nose down into his scarf to try and filter his breathing. He'd learned from experience that while chances were low in the middle of a fight that the Akuma gas would kill him, anything that he brought into his lungs now would have to be hacked out later.

Not that his worn scarf could do much-Lavi was pretty sure he could feel his nostrils singing a little, and the taste of oil was sitting foul on his tongue, along with the sharp, unnatural copper of Akuma blood and the salty trace of his own sweat. He dispatched another cluster of cackling enemies that came his way and called down a bolt of lightning into a nastier-looking pack of bigger, longer-limbed, and more uncanny Level 2s casting predatory stares at him.

One had enough time before it plummeted into a flaming heap to fire off a scatter shot of some sort. Lavi snapped Tessei back in front of him and pinwheeled it around his wrist, deflecting them away from himself, but they tore up patches of the roof around him and set up clouds of dust that stuck to his uniform. The crisp black and white fabric had ceased to be so-stray Akuma splatter had made it a mess of ugly red and black splotches. Exorcism was a messy business.

Lavi swatted blindly with his hammer at the space in front of him, blinking his one good eye repeatedly to try and clear it from the pungent mixture of gunpowder and Akuma ash, and it seemed that every time he did another leering abomination appeared, but Lavi remained calm-Bookman calm, pragmatist calm.

For even as he swiveled to deal with a winged Level 2 diving at the back of his head, delivering a direct Fire Stamp in the process that blew bits of scrap metal off into the mass of other Akuma looking for a chance to get a shot at him, Lavi caught a gleam of electric blue in his peripheral just before several particularly grotesque demonic creatures seemingly cleaved into pieces for no reason, and he knew that he wasn't the only Exorcist in the forsaken town.

Kanda went zigzagging away, as steadfast and untouchable in his duty as he was in everything he did, his long ponytail trailing like a black ribbon behind him and a swarm of translucent insectoid creatures tearing into the Akuma at his command. Their otherworldly keening for blood raised the hairs on the back of Lavi's neck no matter how many times he had to listen to it, but as long as he could hear that sound, Kanda was still holding his own.

He pivoted and dashed Tessei against the platform of the rooftop to launch himself upwards, confident enough in Kanda's skill and in his own awareness to turn his back on that spot for the time being, and as he did dizzying aerial battle, he saw that Allen, too, was doing his part. He went bounding by wrapped in the billowing white of his cloak, effortlessly wielding his one-handed, cross-emblazoned broadsword in wide slashes that eliminated any Akuma too close with just a touch, severing their souls. The mark of the cross shone on the bodies of the ones out of range, ousting them in flickers of celestial light, as though God himself had reached down from heaven to cleanse their existence.

Lavi gave him a slightly maniacal grin when the other Exorcist's eyes cut across to him, feeling wild and alive and very _Lavi_ , and the other smiled back like a real-life, white-robed angel of the Lord, maybe with a trick deck up one holy sleeve. The fire raged around him and the light shone bright, washing away the stains of the dark day, and Lavi knew that they were going to win. There were only a scant few Level 1s left, and there weren't too many Level 2s besides the ones that Lavi was currently engaging. He had a there-and-then gone image of Kanda and Allen working in tandem to defeat what he thought might have been a Level 3-he remembered the horrific cannibalistic Akuma of Edo and supposed that was what happened when enough Level 2s were left with no more people to kill-but the worst of it was past.

Lavi, Bookman Junior and Exorcist, laughed recklessly in the middle of the all but decimated town. They were going to survive, and he was going to have to work harder if he wanted to trump the number of kills that his two companions had racked up-he hadn't consciously realized he was tallying them. There were still plenty more to go around for the devastating trinity of Exorcists.

* * *

 **A word: I do apologize. I have no idea _where_ Lavi's characterization went.**

 **Well, this is my first-ever story here on FF, so I thought I'd open with a simple one-shot scene to test the waters. I never thought I'd actually post a D. Gray-Man fanfiction, but if the manga _and_ the anime can continue, then I guess anything is possible. (D. Gray-Man Hallow, anyone?!)**

 **Thank you for reading, and tell me what you thought-I'm hoping to post more elaborate pieces in the future.**

 **Cheers!**


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